Chinese dwarfs Alone or in pairs

[WandaWigglebottom]

I know age old question, but are these guys better together or alone?, male or female and what colours do they come in?
thankyou xxx

[Gizmodo ^_^]

ALONE!
they are practically seen like syrians now, they should be kept solitary
In some cases they have been kept together succesfully but its not worth it

[racinghamster]

Agreed. I wouldn`t attempt keeping a pair (male or female) in pairs or groups unless you breed chinese hamsters or have some experience of them. Keeping a pair that are related/siblings helps, BUT, if they ever do decide they hate one another, wounds can be quite bad and happen suddenly. You would also need a second cage and room to house two seperate chinese if it came to that.

I have one chinese female and she is gorgeous in nature and as a pet. They do love human company, so only keeping the one allows you to dedicate your spare time on this one individual as I find they are quite demanding little creatures! Very mouse-like rather than act like a typical hamster. They are shy and wary by nature, but that doesn`t mean they are not sociable. far from it! The Chinese hamster s my favourite species and I have kept all species of hamster over the years.

A tank style cage (Zoozone 1/Gabber Rex) is the best cage for a chinese as they will climb and chew bars of any kind and WILL escape through any gaps they find, so a plastic cage is best if your looking into having a chinese. They also require a sugar/molasses free diet and cannot have fruit or normal hamster treats. They can be prone to diabetes if fed the wrong diet, especially when they are babies.

Colours are normal and dominant spot (this has more blochy white colouring through the coat). Pure white chinese are very rare, but are being bred by a few breeders only.

[WandaWigglebottom]

thanks guys thats what i wanted to hear really. i want a single hamster you see and have fallen completely inlove with the chinese, i have a small animal/exotics specialist vet who i have all 6 of my bunnies reg'd with as will hammy.

will Wandas old ZZ2 be ok for it? i have obviously modded the lid to a fine mesh instead,


right so diet wise what am i looking at feeding a chinese?, obvioulsy no carrot or banana in the diet then as with a diabetic bunny?,

can they have hay for their teeth?, or applesticks or pear sticks?

thankyou so much for helping me out this is something im taking deep look into before comitting ,
also where would be best to pick up a chinese hammy. i would prefer not to support pets at home i hate them and im banned from my local store for acusing them of poor quality of life on any animals they sell... that and my friends hamster from their exploded. not to mention the bad breeding... our store is *rubbish*

[dan_parsons]

The ZZ would be fine.

No hay as it can damage their pouches. Willow/apple branches/toys are good for teeth

[racinghamster]

Hi Wanda. Glad to hear there is another Chinese fan joined! They really are fanastic.

Okay, I agree with you on the Pets At Home thing, but they do have an adoption centre where returned hamsters are sometimes available (through no fault of their own), but I don`t know how you feel about that? A friend of mine rehomed a male chinese from her local PAH as he had been there for a good while, so she fell for him and adopted him! He`s turned out to be a little nippy though, so this could well be from not having the correct home in the first place. Chinese are normally 99% NON biters. They have very shy and sweet natures.

Right, food front. Here is what you will need to get you started:

Zoozone tank (brilliant that you already have a Zoozone 2! I have a Gabber Rex and find it great, but a Zoozone 2 gives SO much more versatile space for deep digging and accessories. Just make sure you have plenty of hiding boxes and toilet roll/kitchen roll tubes!

Accessories: Deep substate (non-pine shavings or as I use, Aubiose). It`s a horse bedding and comes in 20kg sacks. Other substrates are okay, it depends what you prefer.

Diet: The mix I use is Burgess Supahamster Harvest (not the dwarf version though as the dwarf version is very dull compared to the normal mix). It`s full of alfalfa pellets. If you use the normal Hamster Harvest, it has lots more variety, BUT, these need to be picked out of the mix:

Yellow corn
Yellow flaked maize
Peas
Pea flakes
Banana pieces

You might think this is a bit drastic, but it`s not. They all contain sugars. The pea flakes are not so bad to be honest, but I find Prinny (my chinese) never touches these anyway. I replace these ommitted ingredients with the following:

Kallo organic wholegrain puffed rice (Tesco or Holland & Barratt/Healthfood shops)
Tesco organic jumbo oats (porridge section) but any dry porridge oats are fine
Buckwheat (Tesco or any healthfood shop/other supermarket
Millet/Canary seed (any pet shop)
Dried mealworms (Tesco/Asda/Pet shops) I feed these as hand-held treats.

other grains can be added aswell like quinoa and lentils. I havn`t bought this yet though but may do soon.

I just use a cardboard tea box with two doors cut into each side as prinny`s sleeping box and she loves it! A Regular silent spinner wheel (that`s the 6.5cm size) is great. They come with a metal stand so ideal.

Your water bottle may hang a bit high in a Zoozone 2, but you can either make a bottle holder to stand inside the tank, or use a few blocks of pine wood to make a shelving step system below the bottle and just cover it with shavings. That way the hamster can easily just walk onto the higher level and drink.

Hope this has helped a little with some suggestions for you.

Oh, one last thing, no fruit or fruit sticks/honey bars or syrup covered hamster treats. Fruit/molasses/syrup are all sugar. Treats for a chinese hamster are normally seeds taken from the mix like sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, bit of peanut, Buckwheat grains etc....

No hay or straw as this can pierce the pouches.

[WandaWigglebottom]

wow.....
thankyou so much for all this information


well itll be a while so ill buy a bag of food and pick out the bad bits in preperation

[racinghamster]

No problem Wanda. The above info gives you a good idea of what you need in terms of habitat and diet. Harry Hamster mix can also be used, but this also has corn/maize and pea flakes in it, so your probably better going for the Burgess Supahamster Harvest in terms of better variety and adding to that once you remove the baddies! It has smaller extruded biscuits aswell, so they don`t need breaking up.

[WandaWigglebottom]

thanks im disapointed that it looks like the only place round here with chinese dwarfs is pets at home
id much rather not go their for my new friend but time will tell

[LocoRocoPanda]

My two Chinese, Tosh and Ai, were from Pets At Home. Is there no Chinese in the adoption section?